TAKEN OR NOT

While watching the Hollywood Blockbuster, “Taken” where a father, a former CIA operative moves heaven and earth to save his daughter from a prostitution racket in Paris , I wondered, ‘How many daughters’ fathers are CIA operatives who can fight the world to save their daughters? Who can break bones, shoot people and jump over the bridges to ensure the safety of their daughters? Why do men react only when it comes to their own daughters? And sometime they don’t even do that.

A seven year old again? What do we call it? Pedophile or a sick filthy animal who doesn’t deserve to live amongst humans.And FYI, animals don’t rape. The damage done to such a young soul is permanent. Will she ever be able to come out of the trauma and trust men, grow with a good feeling about her body or have a healthy relation with the opposite gender?

How long will we keep waiting for stricter laws for such people? Prevention is better than cure. In such a scenario where our children have become insecure, it is our onerous duty to educate them.

Will just educating them, save them?, is my question.

Don’t leave your daughters alone and now even sons. How long? , is my question.

Follow them everywhere. How long? ,is my question.

Is it not stifling to live in a dangerous society like ours? ,is my question.

Wild animals live in jungles and don’t cross the borders and whenever they do, they are chased away . From pet animals to children, all are conditioned to live amongst the civilisation and expected to behave in a certain manner. Rewards and punishments are used to regulate behaviour in all even before psychologists like Skinner discovered that and formulated a theory.

The Indian society needs a conditioning towards women wearing whatever they want to, towards women’s wines or towards women having the right to enjoy their life in a way they want to. It may be an extreme demand but is prevalent already. Though women are taking a plunge but if something goes wrong, they are ridiculed and rebuked.

Having more women in the system, whether it is the law making system or the law executing system, may be another solution to the problem. Related gender empathy could help.

All these things may look like solutions but they are only at a macro level. A lot needs to be done at the micro or at the individual level where the mothers can bring up their sons well. The problem is that the women also have got used to a male dominated society.

We need to change the history and it can’t be expected only from well-behaved conditioned women.